The Make-or-Break Decade for the SDGs has begun

World
Where Profits Are
Derived from True
Value Creation, not
Value Extraction
The world faces critical challenges: climate
change, pandemics, nature loss and growing
inequality, among others. Therefore business
faces major changes: Vision 2050: Time to
Transform from the World Business Council
for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) lays
out a new framework to guide business action
in the decade ahead. We spoke about it with
Julian Hill-Landolt, Director, Vision 2050 at
the WBCSD.
Making progress toward your Vision
2050 demands several critical and
complex systemic transformations.
That comes with the UN Year of Ambition, the
World Economic Forum’s call for stakeholder
capitalism, and other initiatives for a change
of course in the economy. Are these competing
ideas or how do they fit together?
Julian Hill-Landolt: The systems that
may have worked for 1 or 2 billion people
simply aren’t fit for purpose if we want
to live in a world in which 9+ billion
people can live well, within planetary
boundaries. In the words of Bill Gates,
“We need to transform everything.” These
transformations are critical and complex,
and they span from the way that we
create and use energy and things, to the
ways we move around, to the foods that
we eat, the homes we live in, and indeed
even the goals and rules that define the
way our economies work. Given the level
of systems transformation required, we
need as many organizations as possible
working to engage their constituencies
in the urgent task at hand. And we need
them to be clear about the necessity, the
34 Global Goals Yearbook 2021